"Poll question: What percentage of black folk don't respect themselves?"
there are of course two ways to take 'respect ourselves'. there's the individual respecting themselves as an individual, and the individual respecting the broader community.
now most often when this respectability game is played its about the latter - individuals having respect for the broader black community. selling drugs in your own hood as a sign of having no respect for that community. but the assumption there is that the individual considers their community as a reflection of their broader social values. in that example most view their community as a trap in which they are trying to escape using drugs as a possible escape plan. in which case they probably don't respect the community. but not for the values people are putting on it, but rather for the trap that itrepresents in their lives. so in that case is their lack of respect extend beyond their trap to the broader black community? if their ambitions are to escape the trap to become a contributing member to the broader black community, is their disrespect of the trap a sign of disrespect to the community too.
of course i'm reaching, but it's saturday and i'm not that far off from something am i?
just a collection of people forced to live in a particular area due to forces beyond their control
_______________________________________ When discourse of Blackness is not connected to efforts to promote collective black self determinism it becomes simply another recourse appropriated by the colonizer
_______________________________________ When discourse of Blackness is not connected to efforts to promote collective black self determinism it becomes simply another recourse appropriated by the colonizer
sixteenstone Member since Sep 22nd 2002 27996 posts
Sun Jan-11-15 10:45 AM
2. "people are really fucking delusional " In response to Reply # 0
it's damn near 40 million of us. Even if you take Chicago for example, 500 murders per year for the whole city. Let even say 400 are black on black crime. Now this is supposed to be the worst and most problematic of black murders. Let's say another 30,000 regular ass crimes are committed a year by blacks. Multiply that by 100 cities in America. By 200, by 300 even. You not touching the surface on a collective 40 million people. The problem is that the media wants everyone to believe a narrative.
And black people have fell for the okey doke too. That small percentage of people wrong doing is representative of us all. Fuck outta here with this respect shit. If you Black think about every single person you know. Ask yourself how many actually lack "respect." Furthermore, none of the problems we face are exclusive to our race. It's exclusive to certain environments which unfortunately a large number of us face. But the bulk of us 40 million are just regular ass people, with jobs, with children, living our fucking lives, and non violent. White people just have better PR.
A few thoughts that are maybe just stating the obvious on the defensive posture of discourse on "community deficiencies" that being black seems to necessitate:
As a white man, if I think about "our issues" I'm often thinking about issues that I really don't consider specific to whites; their universality is a given to me and I may just not have experienced them among non whites due to lack of knowledge on my part, or the current social structure not allowing them to be embodied by other races. The fact for example that there is white privilege and certain behaviors accompanying it doesn't mean that demonstrations of privilege by a similar dominant class of non whites would be radically different. They might be different in surface ways to do with culture, etc. but for a dominant class to take privileges is human nature in my view.
The same is true for an underclass. The issues of the black community aren't issues that would be intrinsic to black people in absolutely any circumstances. This is obvious unless you are a racist. You transplant people with white skin into the same circumstance you have the same outcome.
However, there are certain circumstances of the black predicament that reflect the operation of bad universal human impulses, in this case within black people, which are due to black circumstance more harmful in their outcomes. Think about the universal human trait of adolescent irresponsibility. A white adolescent person experiencing the same negative moment will have a better outcome. This is among other things what it means to be privileged.
When it comes to public discourse about our mistakes, I see the defensive posture of statements like, "don't make proper corrective prescriptions to billboard" as perfectly understandable (though possibly not optimal). If a white person laments some trait of young people in general, there is nobody to exploit this info; therefore the message if accurate is entirely constructive.
This is a really tough problem to solve; it's not easy.
5. "And now it occurs to me" In response to Reply # 4
Why can't black would be constructive prescribers like Kendrick speak to all youth? Surely there are whites experiencing whatever deficiencies he's describing. If Kendrick said, "kids these days don't respect themselves," would this make sense? If not, it's not because of vast differences between young people. Hmm
14. "that's not one to one though" In response to Reply # 5
>Why can't black would be constructive prescribers like >Kendrick speak to all youth? Surely there are whites >experiencing whatever deficiencies he's describing. If >Kendrick said, "kids these days don't respect themselves," >would this make sense?
His statement is how can we expect them to respect us when we don't respect ourselves. Doesn't really translate to a kids these days comment IMO, because it's loaded with all of the history in it. It's interesting that it's played as us respecting ourselves, when it's really about their respect for us, which is contingent on their value base, which *must* become our value base in order for their respect to be warranted.
█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃ Big PEMFin H & z's "I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles
"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."
sixteenstone Member since Sep 22nd 2002 27996 posts
Sun Jan-11-15 12:41 PM
11. "every Black person in America could wake up tomorrow and be" In response to Reply # 6
outstanding citizens. We could follow the law, wear suits, and long dresses and they would still hate us.
Look at the 1960's, they still showed no respect and killed the shit out of us. Once the laws changed, they just figured out how to get some of us to kill each other. You talking about 500 years of a certain attitude towards a group of people. It's not going to change in our lifetime.
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